Fancy Pants Dessert

So this is a report on a quasi-successful, very fancy pants dessert that E and I made while Little Sister was visiting. Ever since I first saw these incredibly pretty and elegant Berry Charlottes on Annie's Eats months ago (literally) I've been itching for a chance to make them. They're so fancy (and a fair amount of work, though not a ridiculous amount) that it seemed they should be made for some special occasion. Eventually though, E just suggested we go ahead and make them anyways, especially while there are still decent berries to be had.

The successful part of this is that everything tasted delicious. The mousses were good and the lady fingers were freakin' fantastic. Seriously. Very, very excited to know that it's not all that hard to make totally delicious lady fingers. They were every bit as light and airy as their name makes it sound like they should be.

Lady fingers sprinkled with powdered sugar before baking

The final product consists of lady fingers and a big round lady finger base assembled into a cup-like shape that is filled with raspberry and blackberry mousses and fresh berries.

The final product

With a cookie removed to show the layers of mousse

As you can tell from the pictures, we struggled with assembly. Neither E or I have ring-molds like the ones used by more sophisticated bakers than us. Per a suggestion in the comments, we tried a Pringle's can. It turns out that it's really hard to slice all the way through a Pringle's can anywhere close to perfectly perpendicular to obtain "molds" that are actually vertical. So while a funny idea, it wasn't really the greatest.

I think two things would make assembling these guys waaaaaayy easier. One would be having proper molds, particularly ones that are actually straight. The second thing would be to have a stencil of some sort to guide the piping of the lady fingers and bases to obtain uniform lady fingers where the circumference of the base is an integral number of cookies. I don't think it would be that hard to make a stencil-like something.

E, Little Sister, and I thought they were great. J griped that the mousse made the cookies soggy. I really don't think it's an issue as long as they're served the day you make them. I'm sure they'd be soggy the next day.

One addition/change that we all agreed would be delicious with these is a thin layer of ganache in there somewhere - perhaps between the two mousses.

Even if they took quite a while and turned out a bit crooked I'm glad we made these. They were yummy. We now have a good and not difficult recipe for totally delicious lady fingers. E wants to try making a tiramisu with them at some point. Plus, since the mousse was pretty much berry puree, gelatin, and whipped cream, we could theoretically make any sort of fruit-flavored mousse we wanted (though we might have to think a bit about the effects of using more acidic fruit?).